


In A Snowstorm

by Erry (spot0less)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Bedwetting, Desperation, F/M, Omorashi, Wetting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-09 13:35:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4350758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spot0less/pseuds/Erry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin and Annie are stuck together on a training exercise. It takes a turn that has more of an impact than either are prepared for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They were fifty-eight kilometers in, and Armin Arlert’s body’d had done with him.

This was not the usual, near-to-collapse fatigue that boot camp had made a quasi-ritual experience for him. He knew what that felt like. He’d learned how to deal with it, too, how to still run when his lungs felt like everything they took in had been coated in shattered glass, how not to choke or let his stomach rebel, no matter how fast nausea crept up, ‘til exercises halted and he could hack up the day’s breakfast in the dirt. This wasn’t the evening or the early morning strain, either, that had him greet the day and leave it in a throb of pain, able to number each muscle from its torn pull inside of him.

This was simply his whole mortal coil being Done, past communication or negotiation. The cold had seeped in through all his layers, the snowsuit, cadet uniform, and long, insulated underwear underneath. The weight of the pack slung across his shoulders had ground down into him until his legs and arms and back felt beaten past sensation. The ache there was distant, like there was a layer of sleep or waking trance settled over the pain. It made for an intellectual sort of awareness, so that he could catalog his physical breakdown in some spare corner of his mind, set off from the main room:

_“I hurt. All of me hurts. My boots are scraping through the snow; my feet won’t lift high enough. They feel numb; I should be worried about frostbite. My back’s on fire, my stomach’s empty. I need the loo. I might give out before we make the campsite. I actually might, this time.”_

The sense of impending panic all that brought on was distant, too. It had the same inexorable weight as the cold, not worth fighting, not worth burning the energy to deny it. It’d come if it did, and he’d go face-first into the powder, hyperventilating until his consciousness shut down. Then, depending on whether one Ms. Leonhart deemed him worth dragging behind her the rest of the way to the camp and the almost-sixty kilometers back come morning, he’d either wake on a wagon hauling rejects out towards farm country, or he wouldn’t.

That was just how it was, and so he spent his mental fuel on other subjects instead. Like whether the Cadet Corps would have still scheduled this endurance march if they’d known it would snow quite _this_ hard. Was this an unexpected hazard he wasn’t living up to or just the standard curriculum?

“Hey. Arlert.”

Like how wasn’t it odd that he and Annie ended up paired so often, when exercises required an assigned partner? It happened just about constantly. Often, when the drill instructor couldn’t be bothered to match them himself, they would be the last two left over after everyone else paired off: Jean and Marco, Sasha and Connie, Krista and Ymir, Mikasa hovering at Eren’s side and not physically latched on but looking ready to be. Keith Shadis would bat his eyes at the two of them, left standing awkwardly (for him) and neutrally (for her) and growl at them to quit wasting his time.

“Arlert.”

But it happened even when the sorting was mandatory, too, too often to be a coincidence. They ended up together for sparring, where he was worse than a punching bag, and aerial drills, where he was increasingly passable, and for classroom assignments, too, which was the only time anyone looked at him like he was really of any use. Was it a “pair the worst with the best” sort of scheme, with their instructors hoping her aptitude might seep into him via osmosis? (No one, he was sure, thought Annie Leonhart would ever _mentor_ anyone.) Or did they know that she, who blew off every task that was not weighted into their final rankings, would at least go through the motions if stuck with him and his struggles to keep up?

Or was it just the blonde thing, like some subconscious association people couldn’t help but pick up on…?

“Armin Arlert, look at me.”

He already was. Looking. Annie was right in his face with that hard-cement, emotionless frown. Last Armin had checked, she had been several paces ahead of him, but off in his mental antechamber he’d not noticed her doubling back. He hadn’t noticed his own scraping strides turning to baby-steps, either, until he was barely covering ground and the shivers were working constantly underneath his snowsuit. Staring, she lifted her brow at him, dusting flakes off his shoulders with one layered glove. He met her eyes and blinked back into the world around them.

“…y-yes, Annie?”

“The camp-site’s up ahead,” she announced, as though uninterested. She sounded tired, too, but only in the way that she always did. One mitt pointed forward, towards where the path they had been walking curved, snow-dusted evergreens blocking the view. “You can see the flag marking it out past there.”

“O-…oh.”

“Are you going to be able to make it?”

Annie had her gaze fixed on him frankly. Bluntly. This was a straightforward question, not encouragement, not letting him know that he’d almost done it, almost there. Armin was grateful for that. But he had also stopped moving, one foot in front of the other, for the first time since morning. Not quite since leaving camp – they’d had to pause, once, so he could gag by the side of the trail – but almost. Hours. That numb-cold-distant feeling all down his legs was more frightening like this. They might not start moving again. The weight of his supply-pack, which had become a miserable fact of life leagues back, was vivid and crushing once more.

And he needed the loo so, _so_ bad.

“Yeah. Yeah…! I’m sorry, I can still make it, Annie. I just – got distracted. I’ll try to go faster – “

He sucked in a breath, moved to step around her, and very nearly pitched backwards onto his ass. Limbs locked up. Feet froze, refusing to adjust and catch his weight as they ought to have, and he slipped over the fresh powder they’d both missed going past. Armin dropped, readying himself to meet earth, but instead there was Annie’s grip firm around his bicep, hauling him back on-balance, and the quivering of his hamstrings as he caught himself low. Annie stooped to keep ahold of him. He hunched forward, bent into a squat, and struggled to breathe steady.

Then he shuddered as something hot and wet dribbled out under the snowsuit, under his uniform, against his long, thermal underwear.

“Right,” Annie was saying, in matter-of-fact dismissal of his reassurances. “Come on. Get up, I’ll prop you up the rest of the way. I can set the tent up on my own.”

She tugged beneath his arm, urging him upwards, but Armin didn’t budge. He hadn’t heard her, fixated as he had instantly grown on his own lower half. That first dribble hadn’t stopped. It’d repeated itself before it was even over, warm, wet release spreading in a spurt at the front of his long-johns. Then again, so that he couldn’t pretend it was just a dribble anymore. It was more like a trickle or a stream, and he didn’t have the strength left anywhere in him to pull himself back to his feet or start fumbling with buttons and zippers or to _stop._

Nor was there anything distant about this sensation. It coursed, a real flood now, all along his innermost layers, spreading from where the tip of him pressed into wool-knit down between his legs, soaking through to his thighs and the very bottom of his cheeks. Armin Arlert was wetting himself, like little kids did, like small boys who couldn’t be bothered to cease playing long enough not to leak on themselves. And it was hot against his skin and his most sensitive places, the heat trapped beneath the cloth, and just the most fulfilling, the only natural, satisfying, _warm_ thing he had felt since waking in the usual haze of pain that morning.

“Oh…oh-h – “

His breath sent a cloud billowing out from his lips as he almost moaned from the sensation. Overhead, he could see Annie staring at him, bewildered but unawares. She hadn’t noticed just yet. Wrapped up as they both were, the inevitable, soaking stain took time to seep through all the way to his snowsuit. All she saw at first was him crouched there, thighs apart, flushed and dazed amidst the snow.

He was still going, though, and soon layers didn’t matter. The dark-brown, heavy cloth of his suit turned darker, near-black right at crotch-level, then everywhere else as he finished emptying himself. Armin could see Annie’s eyes change when she spotted it. They flickered from confused impatience to surprise to full-on shock, and then just as swiftly there was a hardening into what might have been either anger or concern.

“Are you kidding me, Arlert?”

He tried to pant out a response, a _No, sorry, I –_ , but there was no time for it. Annie did not care to wait. He was still crouched there, feeling the last droplets free themselves into his underclothes, as she bent and tore the pack free from his shoulders, making his arms move as she wanted to get it off. It slung around to her back as she freed one of the straps of her own, taking her load on one side and his on the other. Then, while he was still processing just what that meant, she stooped in front of him, hooking an arm underneath his drenched rear and the other around his back. With all that weight, it seemed like she should have had to struggle, but she lifted herself to her feet and him up into her arms like he was hardly even there.

“You’re smart enough to know what happens if you stand out in a snowstorm in wet clothes, aren’t you?” she muttered down at him, into his hair, as he slumped there in a daze. Of course he was. He could feel it already, now that he’d stopped going. Cold hit on the material he had soaked with urine and rushed straight back in. That warmth he had been thrown by vanished, and shame finally welled up in its place, pushing him to ball and huddle in to escape the air’s bite. All four limbs locked tight around Annie, and his face hid against the shoulder of her snowsuit.

“…s-sorry.“

“We could have stopped, you know.”

Her voice was weary and business-like enough that Armin had to choke back tears. He wanted to wail. Now that his body had been forced off of auto-pilot, there was nothing left but the sting of impending frostbite and the hot, animal odor of his failure. This was what it smelled like, how weak and useless he was, but his throat was too jammed even to say that, to bawl out an explanation. That they couldn’t have stopped, because then this would only have happened sooner, him swooning into collapse whether he peed himself or not –

The snow and the trees were whipping by fast now. Annie kept up a relentless march even with him sniffling and quivering against her chest. Armin never looked to see how swiftly they were moving, but he could feel the wind snapping against them both and where Annie’s gloves had cupped against his bottom to shield him from it.

They kept on. He closed his eyes tight and lied to himself that Annie wouldn’t hear him if he whimpered, not over the weather’s ambient din. Not even this close.

“I’m putting you down now,” she breathed out, some short time later. He could feel her weight shift as both of their packs sagged off-shoulder and she began to lower him. Head raised to find them nestled in a tight clearing. A tall, gray-wooden post planted off to one side stood set against the storm’s white, with a flag flying the Cadet Corps emblem being buffeted in the wind – the end-point for the first leg of their march, marked out for them in advance.

“Start stripping down if you can. I’ll get the tent up, but you’ll be better off naked and dry than soaked out here.”

“y-y-yes, Annie,” was all he could bring himself to say. Boots crunched back down in the snow, and he fumbled at the front of his suit with his heavy, padded gloves. He tried to work fast. The dense woods circling them here shielded them from the gusts somewhat, and beneath his uniform everything still stung. That was a good sign, he thought. The first symptom of real damage from the cold setting in would be numbness, sinking in along his wet thighs and in places he really didn’t want to think about freezing over. Still, his jittering hands refused to do anything but fumble with his outfit at first. Buttons slipped and struggled against his grasp, so that he had only gotten his snowsuit down off his upper body and begun stepping out of it by the time Annie drew back to his side.

“Come on,” she insisted with a hiss. She didn’t wait for him to respond before dragging him, either, half-undressed towards the dark, forest green flaps of the structure she must have set up in record time. He stumbled forward through the snow, and she more pushed him down than let him duck inside the tent, so that he half-turned and landed on his damp ass. Inside, their bedrolls were already out, one stretched across the ground and the other still bundled to the side. The remainder of their packs, piled together, occupied much of the remaining space.

Annie took over stripping him without a word of warning or a break for permission, then.

“Armin, look at me again. Pay attention,” she was saying, steady and firm, as she knelt over him on her knees and pulled off first each boot and then the thick, stained snowsuit still bunched around his waist. He tried to oblige, though his mouth had gone too dry and his teeth too chattery to actually answer. “…Good. Listen: Does anything burn? Or pinpricks on your skin? Spots you can’t feel?”

She had him down to his uniform, was pushing him to lean back so she could free him from straps and buckles. They came undone bit by bit, until she could pull loose his belt and begin getting open the front of his slacks. Armin tried not to think about that or about what a disgraceful sight he made for, unable even to take off his own wet clothes. He focused hard on the sound of her voice and slowly nodded.

“I need you to say it.”

Of course, that was right. Annie wouldn’t only be checking for signs of frostbite on him. Even more importantly, she’d have to make sure he wasn’t slipping into hypothermia, too sapped of life from the cold even to speak. That was what he had turned into now, a series of boxes on a first-aid checklist, each one scented foul with ammonia.

His voice was watery but clear when he forced himself to find it: “I’m just cold, Annie. Cold and really embarrassed. I…think I’ll be fine, besides that.”

“We’ll see,” she murmured, brushing his vest off from him and beginning to work on his top’s buttons. From the waist down, now, he was sitting in nothing but the off-white longjohns that came as a standard part of their cold weather gear. Each leg stretched out at an angle with Annie crouched into the space between, and that left nothing to obstruct the view of the glaring, pale yellowish stain that had settled in all across his front, marking both his thighs with a broad, wet swath and then turning to rivulets further down. She gripped the wool pants by their waistband and yanked them low, nudging him back to sit on the edge of his bedroll.

“Arms up. The bottom of this is damp, too.”

So his undershirt followed, and he was nude, pressing his knees together to his chest to try to salvage some heat and some hint of modesty – which Annie had no time for. Just as readily, she gripped one leg and pushed them back apart so that the dry top of his shirt could serve as a makeshift towel, wool wicking away the leftover moisture from his thighs and front. He whinnied in strangled surprise as she shoved him back further to land on his back and roll legs upwards, that the same practical yet less than hygienic treatment could be turned on his rear end.

“There, you’re dry,” she breathed, and Armin realized that she had been speaking more to herself than down towards him this entire time. Over his head almost, while he shivered and felt the urge to sob freeze inside him, and while she cleaned him like a swaddling infant.

He wondered, distantly bitter, whether being left out in the storm might not have been kinder.

“…Thank you, Annie.” He stayed sprawled out, limp, right as she had left him over the bedroll’s surface. He didn’t bother to cover himself even, now. The cold had left anything private on his body little more than a clinical diagram by this point, and she obviously hadn’t shied away from dealing with him bare. He stared up at the tent’s ceiling, his vision blurry and streaked, puffing out sullen, bruised breaths. “I wouldn’t have made it without you. Thanks. I apologize for being such a burden like this. Again…”

“Save it.”

Annie’s voice could not have colored more disinterested. Now, she sounded a different kind of tired, and a still-gloved hand patted at the side of his hip with what felt like annoyance. He kept staring straight upwards until it patted again, harder, almost a smack beneath its padding, and he had to look up.

“You’d have been fine if you’d said you needed to go, right? Even if I had to take it out for you, you wouldn’t have almost frozen your parts off out there.”

Armin could feel his cheeks glowing, a pinched heat against the cool air, yet Annie wasn’t chiding or mocking. Those words had the simple weight of fact. They didn’t invite discussion, let alone argument. Let alone excuses.

“…Being clever’s not worth much, if you miss the obvious like that, is it?”

“I said I’m sorry – “

“Sure. I’d rather you have just said you couldn’t hold it, though. So I’d have known what was happening. You weren’t too heavy to carry.”

“…Annie, I didn’t want you to _have_ to.”

“Hush.”

Conversation over, punctuated with frustration. A fresh undershirt, ferreted out from his pack, pitched down against his chest as she pivoted away. A clean set of longjohns followed a second later along with a hard stare that held in place until he lifted up and began to make himself decent. “Bundle up and get yourself warm while I get a fire going. Try not to pass out, you’ll need to eat something before tomorrow.”

Armin obliged. He sat up in his clean thermal weather gear turned pajamas and crawled the few feet towards the head of his bedroll. Once he was zipped in tight, the shivering drew to a stop as insulation took over, and the only shudders racking him were the ones that occasionally came when he had to force back a rush of tears. He laid down, got warm, and tried with all the willpower left in him not to slip into unconsciousness.

He didn’t succeed.

He could tell, because later it felt like a dream when Annie’s voice told him to drink and Annie’s arms curled him back up to sit, worm-like in his bag, canteen pressed to his lips...or was he only imagining it? Then dark again, drifting, then something hot and thick and borderline tasteless spooned to his lips while he nods forward and someone props him up, waiting until he opens and swallows.

Annie’s voice saying, “That’s good.”

Then the whole world heavy and swirling around him. Being shaken. Pitch black. The material of his bedroll squelching and the most surreal sense that the middle part of him is swimming, from knees to stomach, while the rest is on dry land. Cold on his backside and the peeling grossness of his longjohns coming down. Annie, he’s pretty sure he’s dreaming now, in her own long underwear, rubbing her eyes and sighing, “…did it again. Lay down already ‘scold,” and her bedroll snug and dry and _warm_ , with the two of them undressed and zipped in together inside of it.

And then morning. Waking, finally knowing for sure that he slept, and nearly swallowing his tongue when he opens his eyes to Annie Leonhart bundled with her arms around him and him not wearing a stitch.

They rose, broke down camp, and made the return leg of the march in near silence, afterwards. Annie said nothing as he packed up his two sets of soiled clothes and donned her spare pair of too-tight longjohns. And Armin said nothing when, thirty or so kilometers along, she stepped close, slid an arm underneath both of his, and began hauling him on the rest of the way.

He leaned against her side, chin drooping low, and went.


	2. Chapter 2

Exhaustion clung to Armin through the whole of the long weekend that followed. At the end of each day’s drills, he fell onto his barracks cot dead to the world, consciousness snuffed out before his head hit the single lean pillow there. In truth, it’d usually gone well beforehand. He’d be out on his feet the instant that Keith Shadis dismissed their class from evening exercises. Everything afterwards was the shuffle of the waking dead. Armin drowsed over his dinner, yawning through every bite, at constant risk of going face-first into the day’s stew. More than once, he stirred at sun-up with no memory of stumbling back from the mess hall, though the thin covers were pulled up around him. He assumed Eren had helped him to bed and prayed that’d only meant nudging him back awake at table.

He didn’t recall much besides that, afterwards, once the fatigue had passed. Just the sleeping and waking, struggling to hold his eyes open during lessons, running on nothing but adrenaline for aerial drills. He was lucky. As one of the lieutenants supervising them put it to them later on, the Corps’ endurance march had been the last test in the “senseless beating” phase of their training, where the ability to withstand abuse was the foremost metric to be gauged. The weeks that followed had them in lectures more often, studying tactics, memorizing repair procedures and schematics for the 3D-MG. Armin was blessed that he could almost manage those in his sleep.

He did, however, remember the dreams. Those were vivid and lingering - and cohesive. They rushed back in to meet him each time his lids fell shut. Never quite the same, never falling into outright repetition. They were like variations on a theme.

In the one that hung most clearly in mind, after he’d woke, Annie had him running laps in his underwear. Annie was a constant in every dream like that, in a way that made him feel, more than anything, mortified by the unconscious casting. But in this one she jogged beside him, out on the training grounds in full uniform. She kept up without a struggle while he panted and gasped for breath, his bare feet kicking up dust on the training field. It wasn’t winter in his dream; he wasn’t in the longjohns that she had stripped him of before. Instead, the sun was out, and he sweltered and sweated in just the trim, white briefs that came with all male cadets’ gear.

He ran until he thought he’d swoon, until he was staggering to grasp at her arm for support. His bladder was near to throbbing, swollen full, the whole time. He tried to tug at her sleeve, to signal that he needed to _stop_ , but she only looked back at him impassively.

“Are you done?”

So, he kept running. One hand between his legs, grasping at himself through the light cloth, ‘til his run was little more than a desperate stumble forward. When he finally began to piss mid-stride, his head tossed back with a pent-up groan. Annie stopped him. She stood him still, one hand resting on his hip as he gave in and went, his stream rushing out so fast that he could see the wetness beading straight through the cloth.

She waited for him to finish, then jerked his briefs downwards, letting them drop between his ankles. His wet thighs were warm in the sun. Her digits, right where his waistband had been a moment before, were warm, too. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t do anything but stand there, cheeks aflame, waiting for reproval. And she simply arched a brow at him, her expression beyond anything he could parse.

“You’re done now, right, Armin?”

He’d woke to daylight flooding into the boys’ barracks and to his own hands rushing, fumbling, horrified, beneath the bedclothes, straight down between his legs. To his infinite relief, they found everything dry, save for a cool, lingering sweat that had slicked over his skin. Yet again, he hadn’t wet in his sleep, though it seemed his subconscious still hadn’t shaken the fear of another episode. That was how Armin’d explained his own racing pulse to himself as he kicked off the covers and rubbed the last traces of the dream from his eyes, then.

Then he’d studiously tried not to think about - or to let any of his classmates rousing around him notice - how hard he was beneath his night-clothes, as he fled out from his bunk and off towards the showers.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“Okay, wait, I’ve got one: Sasha, Annie, or Ymir.”

On days where they were required to sit for lectures, sixteen-hundred hours was officially designated as the 104th’s window for independent study. Any work that took place in the classroom was blocked out for immediately following the midday meal, and then they would scatter off in informal bands to “review.” Keith Shadis and all his lower-ranked functionaries’ supervision disappeared. And so this was a prime opportunity for sneaking out of hiding scraps one had palmed from the mess hall, for stealing a moment’s rest slumped into a corner or across a bench somewhere, and above all else for just breathing, briefly free of scrutiny.

Marco Bott’s company was particularly valued among the Cadet Corps during these reprieves, on account of an inexplicably chummy dynamic with a lance-corporal, who would look the other way as he lifted fresh coffee from the instructors’ meeting hall. This being a luxury recruits were not afforded even during A.M. meals -- rumor had it that it had been banned ever since a disastrous, morning aerial drill a decade back, when over a dozen caffeine-sopped cadets of the 93rd, all rendered colonicly irregular from homesickness and stress, had turned violently less so in mid-flight -- Marco never lacked for studying companions, and Armin never felt guilty about flitting to his side whenever Eren was otherwise occupied for the hour.

Today, though, he was two cups in and having trouble concentrating on anything the rest of the group said.

It didn’t help that Connie and Jean had joined forces to drag their attention from repair diagrams to this game about either wedding, bedding, or tossing other members of the Corps off a cliff, but that wasn’t the primary reason. It wasn’t that they had been forced to camp out near the training field out in the afternoon chill, either, huddled in a loose semi-circle with their thermoses, nor even that the day’s sport was going on with another loose group, including several among those being sent hypothetically plummeting, just yards away on the mess hall porch, easily within earshot.

No, the crux of the matter was far more mundane and yet more personal than that: Armin hadn’t had a wee since the end of morning exercises, over six hours back.

He ought to have gone as soon as the day’s lessons had let out, he knew. By then, rehydrating from their morning workout had seen him through a full canteen and two extra glasses of water at lunch-hour. He’d been sitting on pins in his seat with his thighs grinding into one another as their instructor had droned over-time, telling himself he’d need to make for the loo straight afterwards. But, when it had come time, Eren had hurried up to harangue the lecturer about some point he still was unclear on, and Marco had grinned over at him and asked if he was in need of a pick-me-up.

He’d just nodded thanks and hoped no one noticed the way he wriggled the whole time, while they waited for Bott to smuggle out their collective caffeine fix.

“Tch, that’s not even a fair choice - “ Jean was saying now, as Armin pulled knees to chest and worried at his lip behind his thermos’ cover. “You’d have to kill Sasha, for starters, because who’d want to fight the other two?”

It was strange that he hadn’t gotten up to go yet. Like, it was an earnest point of confusion that had hung over him from the moment he sat down to when Marco’d pushed himself to his feet and offered to get seconds to right now. He would have to do it eventually! That wasn’t even in question. And yet the actual willpower simply refused to be mustered, though the need for relief had swelled into a constant pressure just below his abdomen. He had zoned out from the conversation around him and catalogued each step of its build with almost academic curiosity. The way some of his classmates could never be buggered to study when there were answers to be cribbed the next day, the way they watched the hours before lights-out tick by with a kind of muted fascination at their own laziness, that was the same way Armin couldn’t bring himself to stand and go to the toilet like an adult, just then.

It had gotten bad now, though. The antsy drive from before that had been his body signalling that it needed seeing to had faded out in favor of a weight that bordered on painful. He could sit still without being driven to distraction, at this point, but not without turning hyper-aware of everything going on for him at waist-level. He could feel with fretful clarity where the belt of his slacks cinched tight over his swollen bladder and just where the tip of himself pressed into the cloth of his briefs...

“Who said anything about fighting? It’s just -- they go off a cliff. Like a force of nature!”

Now Connie, who had floated the scenario on the table, was taking objection, shaking his head back and forth. Jean was staring dully back at him like he was being forced to explain fire to a particularly unprogressive caveman. Armin parted his legs some and brought his thermos down to rest in his lap, supporting it with one hand from beneath. If he did it like that, no one could tell that he was halfway to holding himself, he didn’t think.

“Yeah, right, who lets somebody pitch them off a cliff willingly? Face it, you’d have to cliff Sasha, and then you’re stuck with either Dead-Eyes or Freckles at the altar…”

“Don’t call them that, Jean.“ Marco waved his friend off with a placating smile, which to Armin’s distress then swiveled around his way. “Right, Armin? You know, if you don’t join in, they’re just going to keep getting ruder.”

“Seriously,” Connie, now, as he cringed and forced an apologetic smile, “You’ve barely said two words since we sat down.”

And then, just like that, everyone was looking at him. Nervously, Armin attempted to chuckle, but the noise came out as more of a squeak. He tried to make it seem like he was smoothing out his slacks as his palms veered hastily away from his lap. Beside him, Jean seemed to smell weakness and leaned in towards him with a mounting, wolfish grin.

“Right. What about it, bookworm? Come on, we’ll make it easy for you to start with: Annie or Ymir?”

“Uhm!”

Oh, damn, now he was blushing. He could feel the heat creeping up his cheeks and tell by the slight upturn in everyone’s smirks that they’d not missed him going red. Worse, something about the attention was all it took to shoot a twinge straight through to his bladder, so that he had to bolt up straight and force his legs together. He shuddered and began inching himself back and away.

“W-well, they’re...both nice in their way, aren’t they? I haven’t gotten to know either of them that well, ah, so I don’t feel like I can say which…”

Jean had rolled his eyes towards the heavens, supplicating them for the patience needed to deal with such a lame reply -- though, across from him, the rest of their cohort had all gone very still. Connie and Marco had both all of a sudden decided that it was a wise move to put a bit more ground between themselves and their horse-faced friend. They were looking past both Jean and Armin, their gaze frozen in the direction of the mess hall.

“Jeez, no one’s making you actually get hitched, you’re just supposed to pick. Quit playing innocent. Annie was on your team for the march, right? That was overnight, you’re not telling me you didn’t see enough of her to -- “

“Enough of me to what?”

Annie was only tall if you were sitting in the dirt when she decided to wander up behind you, looking downwards with the type of impassive frown that reminded that your head was on just the right level for a roundhouse kick this way.

Jean, now, appeared to be busy choking on his own tongue. Armin could sympathize. He had leaned his head all the way back to find Annie’s long nose and pursed lips pointed straight down at him, seemingly unphased by the conversation she’d stepped in on, and instantly every atom of his being was devoted to the shared goal of not voiding himself into his uniform pants, then and there. God, how was this happening to him? How had he been dense enough to get himself into this situation? His heart had scaled its way up into his throat, and just like that the dim certainty he’d been nursing that he’d be able to make it to the washroom whenever he chose, despite all his delays, had winked out. And, God, nobody was even _saying_ anything. This was the most grinding, awkward silence he had ever sat through in his life.

He had to go _now._

“Well, then.” It was Annie who broke the verbal ceasefire, batting her eyes away from Jean and down towards a sheepishly beaming Bott. Armin could have sworn, though, that her attention was hovering his way...which, admittedly, might have had something to do with the improvised dance routine he had taken up in his seat. “You’ve still got some left, right? I’m not going to make it through another of those lectures under my own power.”

“Ah-hah-...well, actually…” Marco’d begun scratching antsily along one cheek. “Armin took the last of the pot I made, before.”

“I’ve had enough!”

There it was! Here was his opening, his escape route. Armin leapt to his feet, bounding up from the dirt, and shoved his thermos back into Marco’s arms. It was still half-full, and he could feel its contents sloshing warmly as he passed it off. (That sensation hit just a little too close to home for the time being.) His knees quaked, legs threatening to cross tight, as he edged away from the circle Annie had joined. Jean and Connie and Marco were all staring.

Annie, save him, he would have sworn looked faintly amused.

“It does look like it,” she said simply. Marco had handed the container up to her, completing the relay.

“Y-yeah. So, you can take the rest, I’ve got to -- “ Pee, he had to pee, and like any second now, if he didn’t hurry. He was going to start dribbling, he could feel it, right in front of everyone; he’d leak! And Annie was just holding an eye on him, intent and inexplicably close to a smile, as she unscrewed his thermos’ cap. “Go find Eren! I’lltalktoallofyoulaterthanksagainMarcogoodbye!”

Then he was off for the boys’ barracks like a horde of Titans had risen up behind him. Annie poured out what was left of his coffee and slurped from it. She wondered if it would occur to any of the other recruits sitting around that their class’ angriest member still hadn’t cut loose from the lecture space Armin was dashing directly away from.

“You should be more careful, Marco, pumping kids full of caffeine like that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The head in the male barracks was blessedly empty. Despite the free hour built into their schedule, no one ever came back here to crash during review period. The fresh-made beds would have been too great a temptation, and everyone remembered the one unfortunate lad in their first month who’d turned up late after ducking out during lunch to filch a nap. (Shadis had set him running laps through the whole of the day’s lectures and then, only after he’d collapsed and crawled the last length around the training field on hands and knees, given him his walking papers.)

So, the point being, there was no one to see or to judge as Armin’s boots tore across the tile flooring and propelled him into the bathroom. Both hands had clutched shamelessly to his crotch the instant he’d passed the doorway. He bounced from one foot to the other and wrenched at his belt, struggling with the straps that hooked on across it. Just trying to pull himself out from his fly would have been faster, but he was certain that he couldn’t. The instant that he stopped to try to shift the front of his briefs aside, that would be the dam breaking. No, stripping was his only option. His boots had to be kicked out of so that he could get at the bands crossing his legs, flinging them over the sink with the rest of the set-up they all wore even when not hooked to the 3D-MG. (Which, _why?_ This question had just become important.) Until, finally, he tore the clasp on his slacks open, and --

Caught sight of himself in the facing mirror.

He was out of breath. Panting. Distress had made his eyes go wide, so that he couldn’t avoid his own gaze staring back at him. Had he looked this out of sorts, this piqued, in front of Annie and the others before? Watching himself squirm, it seemed so obvious what was going on. This had to be the kind of look that set school-teachers’ danger senses on edge, that had them rushing to dry teary eyes and usher the offending party back inside from free-play. Armin couldn’t recall the last time that he had wet himself as a child, but he remembered when Eren had been about as young as he had known him, his mother patting him on the head and asking if anything needed taken of, before his restless feet rushed off along with his friend. And there had been that one time they had all camped out in the Yeagers’ living room and stayed up late, and he’d woke to a smell and to Eren silently stripping the couch cushions...had his friend looked like this, then?

He didn’t remember. But he looked this way, now, and the sight had frozen him in place. His hair was tousled from the dash over, his slacks not quite undone. He’d parted his legs as he went for his zipper, and now his stance was left open and unguarded. He gnashed down hard on his lip.

No one else was in here, and there had to be another half hour, still, before they were required to report back for class. That -- that made for time to strip himself, if he needed to for some reason, didn’t it? He had a spare uniform folded in his locker, ready to go, too, and maybe not space for a full shower but certainly enough to douse and dry himself if, just hypothetically, he decided to kill his time that way…!

Armin stepped back. He breathed out, letting his hands fall to his sides, and let go. Everything came in a rush, then. The blatant stain forming just left of dead center at the front of his slacks, then spilling off-balance down that one leg. The heat that ran out of him and sent his hips rolling forward as he twisted his head to one side and whined with relief. His one mitt daring briefly to cup across the heart of the damage, then darting just as fitfully away. Rivulets sneaking down his calves. His socks getting wet. The floor getting wet. The slow, then steady patter on the tile as his pants’ fabric gave up on absorbing anything further at all. He’d need to get a towel.

By the time he finally stopped, he had faltered back to lean up against the partition that separated two of the communal shower-stalls, puffing out satisfied “oh...’s”. The blond boy in the mirror looked dazed and yet content. Armin raised his eyebrows at him, as if questioning. The boy raised his back. His pantlegs were clinging stickily to him; his pulse was coming down smoothly from a breakneck pace under his skin.

He’d had an accident - of sorts - and just like that Armin had to admit that he had liked it.

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

It blossomed into a habit before he knew it.

Not a _frequent_ one, not exactly. Once a week at the absolute most, when an opportunity presented itself and he could draw away from the group without prompting suspicion. Independent review periods still offered the best opening he had found. If he made his excuses to Eren and Mikasa right at their start and claimed to want some quiet reading time, he’d have sufficient wiggle room to double back past the infirmary (so no one thought he’d gone to read back where he would actually _be_ ), to indulge himself, and to wash and dress, fresh as the morning dew, before they were called back to attention. People had begun to notice that he looked remarkably neat at those times, when the rest of them were already beat down and grimy from a half day’s worth of training, but he’d encouraged the rumor that he was self-conscious (in a prissy-but-not-neurotic sort of way) about being stuck in his own sweat and stink. The same excuse held for why he’d begun to do laundry twice as often as any of the girls, rushing out before sun-up to tackle his washing when he still had a half-week’s worth of uniforms to spare. Given the alternative, having a rap for being a touch delicate was something he could live with.

The weeks when they had major exams staring down their schedules demanded more creativity. Then, ditching study sessions wasn’t an option he could indulge in good conscience, even if Eren (and most everyone who could stand Eren) hadn’t stuck fast to his side. For those stretches, when tension began warping him into knots and he found himself chewing at the heads of the pens he took notes with, he had to depend on the half-hour they were allowed between the end of evening chores and lights-out. Those were his most nerve-wracking adventures. While the rest of the male half of the Corps dropped onto their bunks and volleyed around lewd gossip, he’d retreat to the showers, bolt himself inside an empty stall, and have done. He’d ball his wet clothes up in a towel, afterwards, and smuggle them out to his laundry bag under cover of darkness, thrilled yet resigned to another round of early-morning washing.

Armin was sure beyond a doubt, by now, that no one was on to him. For the first week or so after, he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that everyone knew. Each time someone sniffed the air in his vicinity, he was certain that they’d caught the scent of piss rising off him (though he’d even switched to a scented soap he had to borrow through Mikasa from some girl he’d hardly spoken to.) He’d leapt at every shadow and dripping faucet, when he’d dared to sneak off for his second and third (and fourth, fifth, and so on...) round of play. But the fact was, he’d concluded, it was just too strange of a secret for anyone ever to cotton to.

And it wasn’t _that_ dirty. It really wasn’t! He had to admit that he still wasn’t fully comfortable with what it might signify psychologically, this overlap between such a prurient, unsanitary need and the flood of satisfaction he got off it. The part where he ended up filthy wasn’t the thing, however. That much he was sure of! It was more...the seclusion and the secretive, curious wrongness of the whole affair, the nobody-must-know aspect on top of a (he had to be honest) undeniable, animal pleasure. Which, he had resolved, wasn’t anything to guilt-trip himself about. He didn’t even touch himself over it! Because it didn’t qualify as perversion, as full-on deviance, if he didn’t, and so his hands had stayed off of himself where they belonged for months on end.

(Well. Mostly.)

There was only the one rub, the sole fly in the ointment, that made his pastime difficult.

This was that, even in perfect, guaranteed, one-hundred percent privacy, Armin couldn’t bring himself to go on purpose. His body simply wouldn’t cooperate. He had tried everything he could think of. Running water in the background, seating himself on the toilet, prodding at his own abdomen to try and force a reaction...none of it worked if he was dressed, and just underclothes were enough to lock his insides down. Unless he was absolutely bursting past the point of physical control, Armin just could not bring himself to pee his pants.

So, he had to know in advance when it was going to happen, so that he could hold it for the required length of time, well prior. Before lights-out, that was easy enough, but if he intended to indulge during review periods, that meant not hitting the loo when he woke for the morning, nor any time before they were freed from classes late in the afternoon. Any release beforehand, and he was at risk for disappointment, for finding himself standing in front of a washroom sink, tensing and squirming and only managing to make some truly ridiculous faces at himself. Those rare episodes always left him tooth-grindingly pent-up, tempted to snap at anyone who so much as looked his way yet too ashamed to truly bring himself to.

He’d learned to hedge his bets, just in case, as a result. At midday, he’d drink twice what he wanted at lunch on the off-chance that he’d find himself free later on. Mikasa had started offering him her canteen at every available opportunity, saying she was worried his body was becoming dehydrated too fast. He’d ended up fidgeting in his lecture-hall seat, his eyes locked rapt on the clock, more times than he could count by now, as he held it.

Rationally, he should have known that was what would catch him out in the end.

~~~~~~~~~~~

**  
**

The coming of spring had put a serious damper on his games. Now that Keith Shadis could schedule aerial runs without irksome concerns like frostbite and visibility through falling snow, lecture hours had been cut sharply.They went into classes twice a week now at most, and so often as not the review periods that had served as Armin’s prime outlet were replaced by fully-equipped team drills. The winter he had spent securely in the top half of their class (for the first time ever) on the basis of his exam scores had faded to a long procession of shattered 3D-MG blades and drillmasters shouting into his face that he had all the precision of a frightened two year-old.

He couldn’t blame them. It was true. While the others were hitting new levels of proficiency with their equipment, he was still struggling to catch up. He could walk through every tactical maneuver they had been taught - and a dozen or so more detailed in a Corps manual he had devoured - but when it came to executing them, he was useless as anything but a second-string distraction. He knew he had to become stronger. He knew he had to push himself!

It just seemed unnecessarily rough, having to do so without the one means of venting he had hit upon. Hiding himself away in the showers before lights-out wasn’t even a safe option anymore. With temperatures edging higher, there were more of his classmates washing off the day’s sweat and strain at evening’s close, rather than bundling into their longjohns and dropping straight into bed. The last time he’d risked it, he’d bumped straight into Marco as he was stepping out of his stall and come this close to dumping his wet clothes out of his arms, right into plain view. He had never felt so needy over the thing before, but now that it appeared out of reach…

He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

When Shadis announced that they’d begin sitting weekly lectures on emergency first-aid, thus, he’d leapt at the chance...a little too whole-heartedly. He’d taken tea and juice with breakfast, in place of water, and guzzled his canteen though it left him feeling water-logged all through their A.M. run. It was a personal achievement that he’d managed the day’s exercises without having to hurl.

But then by twelve-hundred hours he was already desperate. Eren’d asked him if he’d hurt something during drills, from the way he kept wincing and halfway doubling over in his seat. Mikasa hovered at his side and tried to get him to accept a cool glass of milk, pressing him on why he wasn’t drinking.

At twelve-hundred-thirty, a drill-instructor arrived to announce that the day’s lecture was canceled. Something about their class’ medical textbooks being delayed. They were to finish their meal, then form up back outside on the field in one hour for additional hand-to-hand exercises.

Armin had to fight the urge to pound his forehead down against the table.

What was he supposed to do now? The safe, smart option would be to forget the whole thing, he knew. He could step inconspicuously off for the toilets, but then...it’d be an entire week before he’d get this opportunity again. And he’d been holding it for hours, and it needled at him less because he had been put off for so long already and more because the more time that he had to dwell and to plan like this the more he thought about it and the more he wanted it. It had become a definite Thing, now, how much he wanted it, and that reification just made him itchy and uncomfortable.

“Hey, Armin.”

Of course, Annie was at their lunch-table today, too. Eren had invited her over, which he did just about whenever he got the chance and which Armin normally would never mind. Only now, when he was silently locked into measuring the distance between his seat, the mess hall entrance, and the head, she had decided out of the blue to lean over towards him. He sat up straight and did his darnedest not to wince.

Beneath the table, his ankles were crossed tight.

“...yes?”

“Want to pair up for combat drills, later? I don’t care if we half-ass them. And you don’t look up for them today.”

The other cadets around them, save for Mikasa and Eren, tittered audibly. Armin decided not to question whether they were laughing at Annie’s bluntness or at her implication that he needed his hand held through the upcoming exercises. Actually, with so many eyes on him, he’d decided not to question anything...least of all himself. He grinned in a tight, rueful way as he pressed his palms flat on the table and pushed himself up.

“I’m fine, Annie, but sure. I’ll meet you out there, alright? I’m going to, ah, stop by the medic’s before we have to form up.”

“Armin,” Mikasa murmured, looking up at him with concern. “You just said you were fine…”

“I am, I am! Really. Just a...just-in-case type of thing, you know?”

Ugh, he had to learn to stick to lies he could put some advance planning into. For now, though, his overenthused effort to wave everyone off seemed to have done the trick - almost. Eren and Mikasa had both turned back around in a way that said they knew something was off but were giving him space. The rest of the table had promptly forgotten the whole matter. It was just Annie, seat across from him, still watching with her head tilted and one eyebrow raised.

“Right, then,” he sighed and began to back away hastily for the door. “I’ll be right back!”

That had gone so horribly, and yet Armin could not begin to care. He had cast his lot, and now there was nothing for it but to follow through. Scampering legs saw him out of the mess hall and cut straight back across the training field, picking up into as much of a jog as he could muster without giving a jolt to his bladder. The one reassuring point in all this was that the male barracks sat as far back from the main grounds as any of the base’s structures. The girls’ bunks and a couple of supply depots separated where they did exercises from where they were headed now, and so once he had dashed past those Armin could feel reasonably safe that he was out of view from any potential interlopers.

In fact…

Tamping down a gasp, he darted past the front wall of the barracks and kept going. This would be quicker if he didn’t have to mop up the washroom tile, afterwards. And he was on a more pressing schedule than usual today, so it was clever, not reckless, when he made a beeline for the deserted, dusty stretch that made up their housing’s backyard. He would just go like this, then head inside to strip. It was warm out, and the sun would blot out enough of the evidence before they headed back come nightfall. That and, if he let himself admit it, there was something thrilling about the thought of letting loose outside the usual bounds of privacy. He’d held off long enough to deserve that slight indulgence, right…?

Armin pressed his back against the barracks’ log exterior, then sank down onto his rear. His knees were raised in front of him and spread out wide. This way, there’d be no damage to his boots before he could change. The spring sun was out and unfettered in this corner of the grounds, too. It cast down on him, drawing him to sink eyes shut as he let himself relax.

And begin to piddle.

He didn’t know how long it took his bladder to empty like that. It seemed like approximately forever to Armin, caught up as he was in its release. There were no streams pouring down his thighs in this position. Instead, he ended up seated in a puddle that grew steadily until it had marked out all the dirt between his drenched backside and the soles of his shoes. He nodded his head forward and blinked his eyes open for a glance downwards.

How strange was it that he liked this especially, seeing the evidence of what he’d done right around him? Clear and undeniable, and --

“You really have a problem with this, huh?”

Armin quite literally shrieked.

There, off to his side, leaning against the corner of the building, Annie had been watching him for heaven only knew how long. Armin couldn’t say, because he’d not heard her footsteps approaching, hadn’t noticed anyone following after him as he’d made his way across the grounds. Had she gotten up and rushed right after him? Or had he really been dawdling for that long, on the way over, that she’d thought to come and find him…?

It didn’t matter. She was standing there, frowning, and he was sitting in a pool of his own piss, praying that maybe the barracks would collapse just then and crush him to death. Panic jangled inside his chest, its edges sharp. Oh, Hell, but he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t look back up at her. His eyes were locked down on what he’d done to himself, and he’d never even begun to think up an emergency plan for what he’d say if someone actually _saw_ him -

Annie seemed to be waiting for him to speak, but when he only stayed put, trembling, she just shrugged.

“I figured, sort of. With what happened during the march, and the way you start fidgeting like you’ve got lizards crawling up your legs in class, sometimes, then disappear. It made sense. You’re petite, too, so...small bladder.”

This didn’t feel like the time to protest that he had a few inches on her, actually. He was much too busy fighting not to catch fire from how hot he was flushing as he raced to process what this all meant. If Annie had noticed anything beforehand...or, if she thought this was an actual accident…

“But, Armin...”

She had paced closer now. Arms folded behind her, she rested her back right beside him, standing just clear of the puddle he had left on the ground. Armin shivered. Something about her tone had changed, just then. Each word had been matter-of-fact before, as if to say that the state of his trousers was not nearly as big a deal as he might have imagined. Now, as he forced himself to look up at her, she just sounded knowing.

“You know there’s a head right by the mess hall, right? You’re old enough that you don’t need someone to hold your hand on the way there.”

He cringed.

“O-of course, Annie, I just…”

“You wouldn’t be out here if you’d been caught short, either, would you? You’d have run straight inside. It’s not like you’ve got no common sense.”

Armin’s jaw hung open. He whimpered. It was all he could do to fight back a hot edge behind his eyes, threatening to summon up tears. Annie knew. He had been so convinced that he was in the clear, that no one would begin to suspect him, but...she didn’t have to say anything else. Nor did she seem to intend to, from the way she punctuated herself with a sidle backwards and a heft of her shoulders. He couldn’t begin to imagine what she had to think. That he was mental, probably. Was that what this was, her standing there, so pointedly non-threatening, and watching him? Pity, because he had obviously cracked under pressure and made for such a pathetic sight?

Screw everything, maybe that was the truth, besides.

“...Please don’t tell anyone,” he implored, down towards the dirt. “I-it’s _strange_ , but it’s not hurting anyone. This was supposed to be private; I didn’t mean for anyone to see. Please, Annie? People would think - “

Her hand came to rest just above his brow. He froze, choking on air, and slowly raised himself back up to meet her gaze.

“Who’d want to hear about you pissing yourself, Arlert?” Annie drummed her fingertips across his hair. Armin shuddered, unsure whether he should pull away. From further off, he could hear voices beginning to call across the training field. It was -- probably fifteen minutes from when they were supposed to rank up, if the others were beginning to gather, now. He had taken too long at this. He still need to wash and to change, and it was too much to imagine just keeping his legs from shaking for long enough to stand. He just wanted to bury his face in his hands and sob.

“Get cleaned up, alright? You’ll have Shadis on both of our asses, like this.” Slowly, Annie’s touch retreated back and away, all on its own. Armin couldn’t say whether that should have been a relief or not, though he knew that it wasn’t. His eyes were watering as they followed her, his lips stuck parted. He was at a loss. “...We’ll talk later.”

“Annie, wait -- “

She had reached down to hook an arm under one of his and hike him up. Armin found himself standing, unwillingly, eye to eye with her. She brushed off his front with one hand and then already turned to go. Before he knew it, she’d rounded the side of the building. One hand pulled back around the corner, waving him an all-clear.

“I said later, Armin.”

And, for want of any other option, he nodded, took a very deep breath, and followed her around.

“...r-right.”


End file.
